Flipped, Sealed and Undercoated

With the floor pans welded in, my next task was to seal up the gaps left around the welds.

The frame is flipped over

Gap between the center beam and pans 

The pan rests on an inch wide shelf, but even after it was welded in, there was a space between the surface of the pan and the surface of the shelf.

Of course, this has to be sealed, or water will get in and the whole point of replacing the pans will be moot after the first rain.

Rust already

Beam and floor pan intersection

In fact, because it took a couple of weeks (one of which was rainy) to get to this, a very small amount of rust had already formed on the freshly ground and welded spots.  It took some doing but I managed to clean up all the rust and injected a bead of silicone sealant all down the length of the pans on both sides.

The primer cracked on the beam

After primer on the bare steel bits

I'll have to seal up the other side when I turn it back over, but for now it was time for the paint.  It's undercoating, actually, so when it dries it has a sort of rubberized surface that will hopefully resist the chipping and cracking from rock and road debris.  I am going to spray the entire frame with undercoating at this point, leaving the parts that go back to be painted with a more conventional high-gloss black paint.

Sanding it down helped

The new undercoat is smooth

The first coat on the bottom side I put down wasn't really a coat at all, but a targeted use of the primer to cover all the really bare metal spots.  This worked well enough on the bare metal, but when I laid it down on the previously undercoated center beam, the result was a crackled mess.  Resolving not to make matters worse, I elected to just let this dry and when sanded it down lightly before repainting it with undercoating it looked fine.

Even on the center beam

One half is done

I used three cans of undercoating.  One went on the center beam, and the other two went to the sides.  By the time I was finished, it looked better than I had expected.  There were a few wrinkled spots where I hadn't cleaned up some substance or other, but even those spots eventually dried nicely.

Voila! Both sides now!

It really does look slick

It's not like they are going to be visible anyway.  As I've said before, my objective is not a show car, but one that it well assembled, clean and tight.  So far, so good.

Next, we'll turn it back over to seal and paint the other side.  Then it's on to re-assembly.  The freshly repainted front beam and trailing arms will go back on and that transmission, long ago re-painted and now filled with fresh gear oil, will finally be re-installed.

Going the Other Way

Ready to start rebuilding at last

The frame is ready

I have now been working on the Ghia for over ten months, and I can finally say that I have started going the other way.

That is, I am at long last putting parts back on the car instead of the other way around.  The first piece to actually start this process was the freshly cleaned and repainted front beam.

First, of course, we had to turn the frame back over.  This gave me the chance to paint the primed rear suspension pieces, effectively finishing the process of cleaning the frame.

The front end is ready

So, on it goes...

With fresh clean bolts.

It was a real pleasure, putting this piece back on.  I enjoy all the aspects of this project, but it is the reassembly that I have been looking forward to since I bought this rust bucket in September of last year.  Of course, there are still a lot of parts to be cleaned as they get replaced, but I think the dirtiest parts of this job are behind me.

After all the time it took to get it off though, it went back on in just a few minutes.  I elected not to paint the bolts, choosing instead to just hit them with a little clear acrylic after they are tightened up.  This will keep the rust at bay for a little while, anyway.

Next up are what I call the 'heavy metal pieces', the suspension parts like the torsion arms and spindles.  With the new ball joints installed, these need to be buffed and painted before they can return to their original positions.

Torsion arm is cleaned...

...and painted!

I could almost put the whole front suspension back together but for the fact that I am missing those torsion springs that had rotted in the lower front beam tube.  That's a project for next Saturday and a trip to the junkyard.

Next: re-installing the rear trailing arms.

Moving in the Right Direction

 With the gearbox out and all the heavy metal off the frame, I am really, finally down to the frame itself.  The rear trailing arms and front torsion arms are at the shop being fitted with new bushings and ball joints, respectively, so what is left just needs to be cleaned and painted before the reassembly can begin.

Honestly, the rust is minimal, confined mostly to the front part of the frame where the master cylinder is located.  Even though the front beam looked pretty gritty, it cleaned up very nicely.  

The next thing to to come off was that beam. At first I thought I wouldn't bother doing this, and just buff/paint it as an assembly, but as I looked closer, it was apparent that it needed to be pulled apart for a proper cleaning.  

I wore out at least one wire wheel and beat up a couple of others in several hours of what, 'whisking'?  It wasn't exactly grinding, but the action was the same, essentially a tedious but very satisfactory experience of removing all the surface dirt and rusty patina from all the edges, tubes, nooks and crannies of the fully exposed frame. After hours with the wire wheel,  I primed and painted it with a semi-gloss high-heat paint.

I wasn't too happy with this finish, because I think the flat black just looks better on all this suspension stuff, but I didn't want to repaint it.  It was nice to buff up all the nuts and bolts that hold the torsion spring in place.  Putting these back was actually the first thing to officially go back together since I started this project back in September of last year.  On such tiny pivots do projects like this turn. 

I cleaned up one of the pivot bolts and put it back as a test to see if the paint was going to prevent a proper fit, and it looks great.  I had thought of painting these bolts another color, but it looks like the standard will be to buff them up and give them a light coat of clear lacquer just to retard the rust patina that will inevitably return.


After buffing and priming the front part of the frame, it was time to flip the whole thing over and clean up the bottom.

This really does represent the baseline, so to speak, of this project.  Once it was over on it's back, I could finally attack the last dirty and rusty surfaces.

More hours of buffing and sanding preceded a nice coat of rust-proof primer (conveniently rust-colored) and a rubberized undercoating to seal the deal.  A few hours of drying and it will be time to flip it back over and begin the reconstruction in earnest.

My goal, as I've said before, is not to fully restore this car as a showpiece, but to refurbish it as a daily driver.  To that end, I want to clean everything up and make sure it all works, but I am not obsessed with making sure the details of the underbody are perfectly painted and polished.

Considering how long it's been since this thing has been down, it is remarkable that it can be brought back to the street at all, so I am focussing on that goal and not letting obsessiveness with unseen and unnecessary detail get in the way of productivity.

Next:  the parts come back from the shop.  They were expensive but worth it...I think.

Someday